


If We Don't Leave This Town

by xviichapters



Series: 'Weak' And Other Songs [7]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Drabble, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Music, M/M, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 05:55:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12227085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xviichapters/pseuds/xviichapters
Summary: We might never make it out.





	If We Don't Leave This Town

**Author's Note:**

> _inspired by: the lumineers - sleep on the floor_

All he could see was black.

Black and grey and white.

Black ties and black suits; black dresses, black hair. Grey on the walls and grey in the air; grey on her skin, grey in her hair. Her eyes were closed, those warm browns gone. White sunlight, cold and clinical, flitted in through the windows; white curtains floating on the breeze.

Wonwoo doesn’t know how long he has been standing there. A while, maybe. His father’s voice wafts in softly from the other room, talking to business associates and accepting their condolences. The _“take cares”_ from his aunts sound like they were coming through a hollow tube, and he barely noticed the murmurs of ice-cream promised to his younger cousins after the funeral in exchange for good behaviour.

 _How long has he been standing there?_ Did it matter? Sound had lost its colour and vision had lost its lust.

His mother had been everything; the reason he was still here in the first place. Those soft hands in his hair, that fragile smile hiding all her pain. She had always been fragile – maybe that’s why his father had taken such a liking to her in the first place – but she became a glass doll when the disease took her.

“You will stay with me, right, Wonwoo?” she would ask every night. “You wouldn’t leave me, right?”

“Of course not, mother.”

But in the end it was she who left him, quietly, peacefully, and in her sleep.

When he woke up the next morning there were dried tear tracks down his cheeks and a whisper of a kiss on the side of his forehead – barely there. _You are free now, Wonu-yah,_ she had told him in his dreams. That’s how he knew she had gone.

What was he now that she wasn’t around anymore? What was his purpose here in this house that didn’t love him? He was suddenly hollow and tetherless. He felt himself losing grip on reality, losing grip on himself. Until–

Maybe it was fate, maybe it was coincidence.

But it came at the perfect time. _He_ always came at the perfect time. Whenever Wonwoo felt like he had lost all hope, the other would always walk into his life like a promise – _“I will always be here for you, Wonwoo-ah. Whenever you need me.”_

He came to stand before Wonwoo. They stood there, watching each other for a while.

How long has it been since he’s been gone? Two years? Twelve?

Did it matter?

It was natural, the way things moved from there. Wonwoo stumbled forward and the other moved to catch him, strong arms encircling his waist. Within them, Wonwoo felt safe.

“Soonyoung,” Wonwoo whispered.

“I’ve got you.” That was all he said. There was nothing else he needed to say.

They held on like that for a while. It was easy to forget where he was, _who_ he was, and for now he could pretend that anything outside Soonyoung’s arms was just a passing nightmare. He had always been able to do that. There was a time Wonwoo thought Soonyoung would always be around to do that.

“You came,” Wonwoo managed to choke out.

“I couldn’t miss this. I thought you’d need me here.”

He was right, of course. He was always right.

Wonwoo wanted to stay in his arms for so much longer but the relatives were around, and they would talk. About the boy in the cheap faded suit, about the boy Wonwoo's father had taken in out of charity, about the boy Wonwoo's mother had loved like a son, about the boy who so openly loved _him._ ( _Who does he think he is? Isn’t he grateful for all we’ve done for him? Why would he ask for more?_ )

But they would never talk about how Soonyoung was the reason Wonwoo could even sleep at night, how he would shield him from his father’s anger, how he was left with nothing that cold winter night.  The relatives would never talk about that because _they didn’t know._

Before they parted, Soonyoung whispered something into his ear, “If you don’t leave now you might never get out of here.”

 

               _“Come away with me,” his voice was feather-soft but it shook him to the core. “Come away and leave this all behind.”_

_“I can’t.” Wonwoo’s voice, in contrast, was scratchy and cracked, laced with longing for him but also an inborn duty to stay. “You know I can’t. My mom… She’s still here.”_

_He nodded. “I understand. I understand you would stay for her.”_

_He took his hand and kissed it, softly. “But I will come back when she’s gone. And I’ll ask again.”_

 

Two seconds to make a decision.

“Wait.”

 

After the funeral his father had gone drinking and was passed out on the couch. Wonwoo held back the urge to scream, or throw a punch. It wasn’t the first time, and there would never be a last. How easily his father forgot just what happened a few hours ago, as if drink and more drink was the cure to all pain.

His father often talked about how he loved his mother, but Wonwoo wasn’t very sure that was true. He loved the _idea_ of her – the perfect wife with her perfect smile, who bore him the perfect son and kept a perfect house. A perfect doll.

Everything that was not perfect was blotted out with drink, and a belt.  The scars, and tears and pain never existed in his father’s eyes.

So Wonwoo felt nothing when he opened his father’s safe and took all the money within.

It was too easy. He was too rich to care about properly keeping his money safe (he puts the codes into a little corner of his wallet) and too naïve to think no one would steal from him.

Wonwoo took from three of his safes; 1.4 billion won in total.

His father had more, and will always have more. He made them with a snap of his fingers.

And with every snap, the bond between the two of them broke even further.

 

“Wonwoo?” Soonyoung’s warm timbre brought him back to the present. “What do you want to do now?”

“Anything,” Wonwoo replied, because for once, he was _free_. Free from his father and free from his family. Free _with Soonyoung_ and a lot of money on hand. “Let’s drive, Soonyoung. Let’s drive on the freeway and pass all the exits until we reach a country road and the tar stops and it’s just dirt, and grass and there we’ll build a house, adopt some kids and give them the life we never had.”

He paused to catch his breath and realized Soonyoung was watching him, a strange expression on his face.

“What?” Wonwoo asked. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Kids?”

“Y-yes.” He paused, a sinking feeling in his gut. “Didn’t you want that? With me?”

For a second, a minute, he was afraid he had overstepped the boundaries. Soonyoung had only asked him to run away after all. Soonyoung had always been an escape, a ticket out, when things went wrong. When his friends had abandoned him, he had let Wonwoo cry in his arms and when the muck picked at his skin, he had told him that he was beautiful. Soonyoung had been kind enough to stay until Wonwoo could get back on his feet again. But after that, he left.

Wonwoo was growing embarrassed by his ridiculous assumption.

He should’ve known it would be the same. After a temporary lapse in time, they would both come out of their dreamscape and it would’ve been beautiful but the two of them had always been just that – a dream. Fleeting and momentary.

But suddenly Soonyoung’s face was breaking out into a smile so big and bright that Wonwoo was blinded. His heart buzzed and when Soonyoung pulled him in to put a long kiss to his forehead, Wonwoo knew they were going to be alright.

“Of course I want that of course, _of_ _course_.” He kissed him over and over and suddenly his eyes were not just filled with joy, but relief. “I-I didn’t– I thought, after this, after we’d had this little pocket of time you’d leave and I wouldn’t blame you of course – I, we, never decided on anything, but–”

Wonwoo silenced him with a kiss. He felt the fear Soonyoung did and wanted it to disappear. He had nothing to worry about. They were each other’s; always have been and always will be. “Soonyoung. My beautiful strong Soonyoung. I would never in my life want anything more than to be with you for as long as we’re both alive.”

Wonwoo looked up and there were tears in the elder’s eyes. He felt his own heavy with them. “We could do anything together.”

“Anything,” Soonyoung agreed. “Let’s drive, Wonwoo. Let’s get out of here.”

 

They travelled the road and slept in the barns of people's farms and did as much as possible to avoid the big cities. On the radio there was some news trying to find them. But his father must’ve thought the sum too small or just didn’t care enough because it was gone the next week. Which was just as well. The both of them had no intention of being found.

When the old truck finally broke down near a little town in the countryside, Wonwoo did exactly what he had said he wanted to do. They bought an old house that was selling cheap, fixed it up, and set up an orphanage. It was hard but the both of them made it through together.

Soonyoung's eyes danced the way he liked to do whenever he played with the children, and the sunflowers grew as tall as Wonwoo himself, with the love that rolled out from the house. There was laughter and there was sunshine, there were cuts on legs and plenty of tears. But at the end of every day, there was always Soonyoung's arms holding him close as he buried his face into the crook of his lover's neck, and the soft hush of his warm voice singing a bittersweet lullaby.

Here no child was lost or lonely or unloved, the way they had once been.


End file.
